Category: Apple

Not long ago Apple introduced a book authoring program called ‘iBooks Authoring’. Its an application that makes publishing books to the Apple iBooks store a whole lot easier. One of the reasons my book ALL THAT MATTERS was not published to the iBooks store was because of how difficult it was to do so. To solve this problem Apple has made an application that will make the whole process of publishing to their store easier.

When I checked out the application on the Mac App store the other day I saw loads of comments from people who have already used it publish their own books and that it was very easy.

But will I use it?

The answer is yes and no.

I will use ‘iBooks Authoring’ to post ALL THAT MATTERS so it will finally be available on the Apple iBooks store. I plan to do that as soon as I am done writing MIRROR IN TIME. While I have been writing my second book, I have been planing in the back of my head to hire a third party to code out the book for the Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and other e-book readers. Coding out the first book took up a lot of my time and I just assume put that in someone else’s hands who has more experience than me at doing it.

I really love music. All of my life music has played a big part in it. I remember at a very young age listening to vinyl records on my father’s Sony turntable home stereo system. I would listening to records for hours and hours. When CDs first came out I started buying them. To this day I still buy CDs and have a pretty large collection.

When MP3s started to make an appearance in the 90s they had one large advantage for the causal listener and one large disadvantage. The advantage being that file size of an MP3 file was is very small. You could store hundreds of MP3 encoded songs on one CD. This was huge and lead the way for music players like the Apple iPod.

The big disadvantage to MP3s for people like me was that since the audio was compressed to be a smaller file size you could hear the compression or the missing audio data when listening to an MP3. This drove me nuts!

I have friends that to this day swear up and down they can not tell the difference when listening to a song on a CD or when listening to the same exact song from an MP3 file. To me the differences have always stuck out like a sore thumb. Which at times I can’t even believe since I have been a rock drummer for so many years and I have to be experiencing some form of hearing loss by now.

So, because I can tell the difference between the lower quality audio as a result of an MP3 file and a CD I have just always bought CDs.

Very recently I have been educating myself on the virtues of the Free Lossless Audio Codec, or FLAC for short. Because FLAC is a lossless audio format it sounds just like my CDs sound. I can not tell the difference when I am listening to a FLAC audio file verses listening to the same song on CD. Everything I have educated myself about FLAC says that there really is no audio difference between the CD audio file and the FLAC audio file. The lossless audio codec was specifically designed for audio and the resulting file will drop down to at least 50% if not more of the original audio file from the CD.

So, why do I care about all this? Why don’t I just continue to listen to my CDs? Well, I do still listen to my CDs at home, but we now live in a world with lots of portable devices that were made for our connivance. I would like to take full advantage of my devices.

Based on the audio guide I found I started encoding my CDs right away. I received my headphones a few days later and then my iPhone 4S arrived. I purchased and loaded a copy of ‘Golden Ear’ on to my phone and transferred over a few songs to test out the application and my head phones. I was amazed! Every song sounded wonderful and crystal clear. The ‘Golden Ear’ audio player works a lot like iTunes for the iPhone. You have the quick access controls from the home screen as well as a play list of music to scroll through and choose from.

If you are really into audio quality like me, I can tell you I am so happy that I found this solution. I wish I had found it sooner. It would have saved me years of frustration.

In 1997, I found myself, along with three very close friends of mine, huddled together looking at the glowing screen of an Apple Power Macintosh 5000 series computer in our high school graphic arts class. We where all very different from one another. Brought together because of our shared interests in computers and technology. That glowing computer screen held for me, the most earth shattering and amazing news I had ever read. Steve Jobs was returning to Apple as Interim CEO. The Co-founder of the greatest computer company to ever exist was back to lead the company he help start, and save it from what some where saying at the time was Apple Computer’s last days.

I was really very fortunate to have such great friends like this in high school. While other people our age had their respective hobbies, my three friends and I spent our free time at each others respective houses geeking out at the latest technology news or fiddling with some new piece of hardware we got our hands on. I have very fond memories of that time.

Steve Jobs’s passing has really affecting me. Much more than I ever though it would. We all knew this day was coming. We all prepared ourselves mentally for it. I have thought long and hard about whether or not I would write a blog post about this. I almost didn’t write anything at all. I didn’t want to come off as too emotional. I thought I could just sit this one out quietly and wait for the moment to pass. But I can’t.

The news sites have been showing images of people grieving for a man most of them have never met. (I, however was lucky enough to have been in the same room as him.) Flowers and tokens of remembrance have been left outside of Apple’s stores around the world and outside Steve’s home in California. All these people have had a chance to grieve in one way or another. I have not.

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Apple inc. have directly or indirectly forever changed the world we live in and the technology we use. For me that impact is a personal one. I have always admired Apple and the people who founded the company. From the time I could afford to buy my first computer I have always used Apple products. Steve Jobs was able to take the very ugly world of technology and make it beautiful. He was able to make it easy to use, and user-friendly, and in a world mired with technological chaos, he was able to make it user-friendly for people.

The thought of Steve Jobs no longer over seeing the company that I have grown to love and admire. The thought of the world no longer being able to benefit from his in site and influences leaves me weeping.

I have lost a man I have admired and looked up to all of my life. The world has lost a unique soul that wont soon be replaced.

All I have wanted to do since Steve Jobs passed is to call up my three good friends from high school and take them all out to dinner. I want to have an evening where I can sit down with them and talk about technology and the future just like we used to do in high school. And hopefully be reassured that even though we have all lost an important person in our lives, the fait of the company he help start will live on as faithfully as it ever has.

I don’t have a glamorous day job by any means. (I am still waiting for PIXAR, Apple, or ILM to call me back.) What I do have at work are animals. This is the first place I have ever worked that allows you to bring in your own pets. Which is nice at times.

One of the pets we have is an office bird named Molly who usually hangs out in the Physical Therapy (PT) department most of the day. Sometimes when employees leave the department to assist people, Molly is left all alone and starts to squawk. When this happens I normally run to her rescue and let her hang out on my shoulder while I work while I pretend to be a pirate. (I have the beard for it don’t you think?) At least until someone from PT comes to get her.

I thought I would share some photos of Molly hanging out with me and destroying my desk. She is quite fond of my iPhone head phones.

I have almost always had a wiki in one form or another to help me keep track or remember things that I just don’t use everyday. It’s been a very useful tool for me, not only at home, but also in the work place. TiddlyWiki stands out as one of my better wiki experience as I could just keep it on a thumb drive in my pocket.

My thoughts on keeping data in a manageable wiki have changed recently. This is due to a post I read at mnmlis titled: Store everything in text files.

The argument it is that text files are not only faster to open, but if you have a modern operating system the contents are completely searchable. On my Mac for example, I can be almost anywhere and press Command + Spacebar and I am presented with a search field. I can just start typing whatever it is I am looking for. If I am looking for my Corned beef recipe I just have to type “Corned beef” and my text file with my corned beef recipe comes right up.

I do keep all my text files in a directory called “Wiki” located in my Documents directory. I also try to keep the titles of my documents somewhat standard. For example, the title of my Corned beef recipe is “Recipe – Corned beef” so if I search for the name of my recipe only Corned beef will show up. If I search for just “Recipe” I get a nice list of every recipe I have saved on my computer.

The whole thing is a lot faster than any wiki I have ever used and has been working out just great for me so far.

Bob Iger is the current CEO of The Walt Disney Company. This guy is someone who caught my attention early on when he started working as CEO for Disney because he gave an interview in TIME magazine, I believe ( I still have the interview clipping) where he talked about his normal work day and how he manage to get things done. Little tips and tricks he shared with the Magazine. Things like how to make sure he had enough time to just get work processed that was sitting on his desk. How to properly thank people and to use history as a key to master the future. I guess you could say he is someone I respect and find inspiration in.

The other day I saw this video posted on hulu. I have no Idea how long the video will be available, but I wanted to share with anyone who is interested.

Last night around 9:30 when I should have been in bed, but was instead up watching a movie with Hannah on my Media Center, the power went out. We only pay some of the highest rates in the country for electricity so it stans to reason that it would go out ALL THE TIME. The two of us got up from the couch and lit some candles and got a flash light. Looking out the window I could see that the whole Juneau valley -with exception to the airport- was with out power.

Even without power I was still upbeat. As soon as the power went out I heard the beeping of my APC UPS that power my Qnap NAS going off every 15 seconds. “Is that thing going to be alright”. Hannah asked.

“Yeah. The NAS should power it’s self down in two minutes if power is not restored”.

“Oh, cool”. she said.

Qnap NAS

Sure enough at the two minute mark I heard the shut down signal of the Qnap Nas. Moments later it was off. Things like that make me smile. When things just work as they are supposed to.

After that Hannah and I crawled into bed and as most nights I proceeded to read to her. I no sooner got myself situated in bed when the power came back on.

Gail Wood of Alaska Electric Light and Power says the lights went out at about 9:45 with power restored around 11 p.m.

Wood says the outage location has been identified as the East Terminal where the lines transmit into the submarine cable that crosses Taku Inlet. A crew will go to the area at first light to investigate.

Wood says the outage lasted about an hour and a half for those who had power restored last.

In the meantime, AEL&P is running off backup diesel generators, and power from the Annex Creek and Salmon Creek hydro projects.

Gail Wood of Alaska Electric Light and Power says the lights went out at about 9:45 with power restored around 11 p.m.

Wood says the outage location has been identified as the East Terminal where the lines transmit into the submarine cable that crosses Taku Inlet.

A crew went to the area this morning to investigate, but could not locate the cause of the problem.

AEL&P rann the system with backup diesel generators, and power from the Annex Creek and Salmon Creek hydro projects following the problem. The system was scheduled to be back on full hydro by mid-day today, according to Wood.

She says the outage lasted about an hour and a half for those who had power restored last